The rules
There are about 90 restaurants in New York City that can fairly be called a steakhouse. This project visits all of them, orders exactly the same thing at each one, and scores them on exactly the same scale. 5 down and 85 to go.
Why the same order at each place? Because it’s impossible to judge restaurants fairly when you order completely different things - that’s like comparing apples to oranges. When you order the same thing across all restaurants, you finally get a fair assessment of how each ranks.
The order
Identical at every steakhouse. Nothing is swapped for whatever looked better on the night — the only substitutions are the ones a kitchen leaves no choice about, and each one is named on the review.
- 1
Manhattan
Served up. Balanced with bite, properly cold, in a chilled glass.
- 2
Shrimp Cocktail
Big shrimp with a clean snap, served with cocktail sauce.
- 3
Filet Mignon
The main event, and the largest share of the score. A thick barrel cut (taller than it is wide). No fat. A proper crust, cooked to the temperature ordered, and served with nothing atop.
- 4
Creamed Spinach
Thick and creamy, and still tasting of spinach.
- 5
New York Cheesecake
Dense and tangy on a crust that holds together, with fresh berries, and cool but not too cold.
Not every kitchen serves all five. Where a steakhouse doesn’t do the shrimp cocktail, the creamed spinach or the cheesecake, I order the closest thing it does make — another cold starter, another creamed side, the house’s own dessert — and score that in the same slot, out of the same points, with the swap named on the review. It’s the same rule the filet follows at a kosher house: score what the kitchen actually serves, and be clear about what that was. A missing item is an unfortunate menu decision, but not necessarily a catastrophic fault, so it costs nothing by itself — only the substitute is judged, on its own merits.
The score
100 points, nine categories. The filet carries the most weight.
| Category | Points |
|---|---|
| Manhattan | 10 |
| Shrimp Cocktail | 10 |
| Filet Mignon | 30 |
| Creamed Spinach | 10 |
| New York Cheesecake | 5 |
| The Room | 10 |
| Service | 10 |
| Extras | 5 |
| Value | 10 |
| Total | 100 |
What counts as a steakhouse
Calling itself a steakhouse is not one of the tests. A name is a claim, and testing claims is part of the reason for this project. Both of these have to be true:
- It sells steak by the cut — you choose a cut and pay for that cut, rather than a fixed price for whatever keeps arriving.
- It serves the tenderloin — either as a filet mignon, or as part of a porterhouse.
The porterhouse clause exists because of Peter Luger, whose menu lists no cuts at all: steak for two, steak for three, steak for four. There is no filet to order. There is, however, a filet — it is the smaller side of the T-bone, dry-aged and broiled like everything else on the plate. Where a restaurant has no standalone filet, that is what gets scored, and the review says so.
What the rules exclude is a kitchen that has decided not to serve tenderloin at all. Hanger, flatiron, Denver, skirt, rib eye and strip are all fine steaks and none of them is a filet. A steak restaurant serving only those is telling you what kind of restaurant it is.
The kosher exception
There is one case where that rule would do exactly the wrong thing. The tenderloin sits in the hindquarter, and in America the hindquarter is generally not koshered — removing the sciatic nerve and the forbidden fats is painstaking work that is rarely done here. A kosher steakhouse cannot sell you a filet mignon however good the kitchen is. It is the same reason the “Roumanian tenderloin” at Sammy’s is, and always has been, skirt steak.
Throwing out every kosher steakhouse in New York on a technicality of butchery would be absurd. They stay, scored on the closest cut the kitchen does serve — usually what the menu calls a chateaubriand — and the substitution is disclosed on the review, on the scorecard and in the filet ranking. You will always be able to see which score was measured on what.
The line is between cannot and will not. Le Marais would serve a filet if American kosher butchery produced one. St. Anselm has decided it is a hanger-and-flatiron restaurant. Only the second of those is a reason to leave somewhere off the list.
See who these rules keep out →
Ground rules
- Every meal is paid for in full. No comps, no press dinners, no sponsorships.
- Reservations are made under a normal name.
- The filet is ordered medium rare, every time.
- Scores are published as recorded shortly after the visit. They are not revised later.
- One steakhouse every two weeks, published here.
Who is doing this
My name is Kevin McCurdy; I live in Manhattan and have loved steak - and steakhouses - for as long as I can remember. I’m no food critic but I know a good filet and steakhouse when I experience it. I think the steakhouse is one of the city’s most underrated institutions - a room designed around doing a small number of things extremely well - and when it all comes together, it makes for something truly special.